Occupy Wall Street (OWS) librarians reported tonight that the NYPD have confiscated the OWS library for a second time, a few blocks away from the National Book Awards ceremony.
The librarians tweeted: “OWSlibrary been told to remove the books from the park or the police will seize them.” Five minutes later, they wrote: “NYPD & Brookfield have taken the People’s Library again. and we love you all.” Bookseller Michael Lieberman added this information: “heard from Betsy Fagin one of the original OWS librarians that nypd and Brookfield did indeed take everything!”
Earlier today, the librarians reported that some books and materials confiscated during yesterday’s raid on Zuccotti Park were damaged. Lauren Comito has posted more pictures of wrecked books recovered at the garage (including the photo posted above).
The report included a photo of a wrinkled Bible. They are sending more reports about the state of the library–more materials may still be forthcoming. The librarians posted the photo embedded below from the city garage where the books were stored, only showing a fraction of the books and materials that once stood in the park.
Here’s more from the library blog: “it’s looking like only a few boxes of books and our (destroyed) laptops and one chair were at Sanitation. Our people on the ground report that ‘A lot is destroyed . . . more may (or may not) be coming out of their giant trashpile at back of building’ But it’s obvious to me that by recklessly throwing the contents of the park into dumpsters, the NYPD and DSNY working under Bloomberg’s orders destroyed what we built.”
In brighter news, the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology is now available online as a free PDF download.
Editor’s Note: We will continue to update this post as the story evolves tonight.
